The reason for this comes down to one main point: I don’t have any overhead and therefore don’t have to charge you extra to pay for employees, or office space, or ten of the latest Macbooks, or anything else that comes with running a typical company.

I mostly work alone, project by project, and use third-party involvement on an as-needed basis. As such, you pay me for my time without any bloated costs built into the price.

I also mention “cheap SEO services” because a lot of people use that term when searching for search engine optimization companies.

Most SEO websites tend to stay away from that phrase, but why avoid it if that is what people are searching for? “Affordable SEO” is another one people like to use when they search, and why not? Every penny counts these days and if you can pay a little less for good search engine optimization, why wouldn’t you?

In this case, “cheap” only refers to the price we pay and not the quality, unless the quality sucks, of course, in which case it probably isn’t worth it.

The problems with hiring a larger SEO and Design company.

in general, dealing with a larger company can bring a host of issues that you may or may not be prepared to deal with.

Here are some things to consider.

Who’s paying for all of this?

For every person involved with your project, there is a corresponding salary, office costs and profit that needs to come from somewhere, right?

Well, in this case “somewhere” means “you“.

Working directly with me, however, means you pay one person an agreed-upon rate and empowers you to discuss the details of your project with the person who is actually working on it.

All of it.

And everything is explained in simple language, including time-frames, strategy, pricing and due-dates.

They insist on doing everything themselves.

It isn’t uncommon for a larger SEO company to insist that they design your website and won’t work with any ‘wordpress themes‘, for example.

The reason for this seems obvious enough:

It’s because they won’t make any money off it.

Now, while it’s true that many themes won’t contain everything you need (or would like to have), a lot of them come pretty close and you can buy them from a website like Themeforest.net for $50.00.

Or you can pay a larger company thousands of dollars instead.

I actually prefer the themes and welcome them, no problem.

I can tweak them easily enough and, for the most part, they are just fine for most small business websites.

You’re not that special.

The bottom-line for a lot of the larger companies is that they need to keep things rolling.

Which means churning-out clients on a consistent basis.

You’ll matter when they’re signing you up but it will be a business agreement and, when your time is up, it’s up.

Unless you have more money, of course, at which point you’ll begin to matter again.

When you work with me, I take your project seriously and almost as personally as you do.

They use outdated or “black-hat” SEO techniques.

A client recently told me that an SEO company he had hired in the past had manually submitted his website to hundreds of “website directories”.

Sadly, this isn’t uncommon.

And it’s a waste of time, because:

The directories in question are mostly overseas and yield next to no traffic, let alone very little targeted traffic (if any at all).

Using the wrong directories will come back to hurt you in the end.

There may be some initial benefit or gain, but it won’t last long and really is a waste of your money.

My final point on this matter would be that these types of things can all be done by you in the first place.

Contracts and monthly SEO costs.

It isn’t uncommon to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month for an ongoing SEO contract. This isn’t to say that you won’t get some results as you would in all likelihood see some improvement in your overall SEO standings. The real consideration here is the cost and how much you have or are willing to pay.

They may be knowledgeable and they may get you results, but they need to keep that ball rolling no matter what. Getting involved with them depends on a few factors, but for most smaller businesses, you don’t have to. I can develop a plan for your website and implement it in a timely manner and include you in the process every step of the way.

Here is how my SEO services work:

We’ll discuss your business and any goals you might have.

This will include current customers, potential customers, prices, products, areas, demographics and more. All of it.

We’ll clean-up your existing website.

There’s no point in building a house on a weak foundation and the same holds true for your website. It needs to be structurally sound in fundamental SEO techniques and we should be able to get it up and running in little time, depending on how large your site is and what is needed, of course.

Don’t have a website? Let’s make a responsive one!

Having an outdated or non-existent website is actually a bit of a blessing in disguise. Starting from scratch is often easier and we can have a mobile-ready and fully responsive website that Google loves up-and-running in no time.

You should also be aware that as of April 21, 2015, Google is penalising websites that aren’t mobile-friendly and that don’t adhere to a fairly strict set of guidelines. Simply having a website with the “Viewports” configured won’t cut it, so keep this in mind when considering how to improve your SEO. Google has a free Mobile-Friendly test page here.

I’ll research keyword niche opportunities for your business.

Once we have everything in place, it will be time to research new business opportunities and sources of traffic that will convert for you. While no type of traffic is bad, visitors who don’t actually buy anything from you probably aren’t worth focusing on and we should use our resources to concentrate on paying customers. The amount of traffic might be smaller, but the conversion rates will be higher. More sales = more profit for you.

I’ll put the pages together and let the search engines do their thing.

Once we know who we are focusing on, we can create strategic web pages that Google will absolutely love!

Wash, Rinse & Repeat.

It takes a while in some cases for Google (and other search engines) to fully index your website and to see them in the search results. Once the work is done, all you can do is wait and see what happens. With the positive results, you can further tweak those pages. With weaker results, you’ll then know that whatever you did isn’t working and head in a different direction. Knowledge is always power, so turning weaknesses into strengths is part of the process as well.

In the meantime, create & update Social Media accounts.

The bad news about SEO is that it is definitely an ongoing process. the good news is that there’s always something to do and you can work on your social media presence while you are waiting for your website to be fully indexed.

You’ll be surprised at how quickly this can work.

If you’ve been thinking about upgrading your site and diving into the world of SEO, you’ll probably be surprised to hear that I can have your revised and optimised website operational within a month. Now, I have to be clear and mention that I’m not promising top placement for all of your keywords, but I can definitely improve your online presence and get you pointed in the right direction pretty quickly. SEO is definitely a marathon and not a race.

Before you commit to another SEO company, give me a call and we can talk about your goals and what can realistically be done in the short and long term for your website and company.

No contracts. No fine print. No pitches, gimmicks or scams: Just solid work for a reasonable price.